Comments on: Higher education in the Budget

By: Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily

Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:27:06 +0000

[...] differ and wonders where was the relief on pressure on interest rates? Andrew Norton points to his op ed in the Australian while Catallaxy is hosting an open forum for debate and [...]

By: conrad

conrad — Wed, 14 May 2008 05:55:09 +0000

Christian,

most universities (possibly all) in Australia have their own scholarships schemes, and most seem to have similar amounts to APAs they get, so the number of people you are looking at on them is probably at least 50% (probably more, as there are also many ad-hoc industry ones, and people ask for them on grants also). The main way they are dished out is to the people who are the top few in 4th year, but often specific areas are offered them, which means if you want to do a PhD in an area with no competition it will be much easier to get one than in an area with lots.

By: Sinclair Davidson

Sinclair Davidson — Wed, 14 May 2008 04:53:50 +0000

Good point. I looked at last year’s overall expense estimates, but not the detailed breakout.

If most of that $613 million was ad hoc stuff, then the uni’s have done quite well this year.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:51:28 +0000

Sinc - There was not $613 million in special projects in the 2007-08 Budget, only $44 million. I think this is the $500m for capital works which is to be paid in 2007-08, plus the ad hoc VSU buy off the National Party funds, plus the $15m for the U of M think-tank, plus the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies ($8m). That still leaves me a bit short of $613m but most of the way there. So it is a series of once-only payments that cannot be regarded as ‘cuts’ if they are not repeated.

By: Sinclair Davidson

Sinclair Davidson — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:49:21 +0000

I can’t quite work out what they’ve done either. Looking at table 7.1 (box 4, budget paper 1 statement 6) it looks like they have stripped money out of Higher Education Special Projects (don’t know what that is) and then replace that funding in the forward projections starting 2009-10 in the Higher Ed Endowment Fund.

By: Christian

Christian — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:23:59 +0000

Yes I agree with you on that point Andrew, it would be better to raise the amount of the APA than double the amount available. Living off $20,000 is not too attractive a prospect, especially in the case of singles. I think in the UK the research council scholarships which I think are the equivalent of our APAs are about 14,000 GBP which is around 28,000 AUD which is not that bad especially if living outside of London. I’m surprised how few people doing PhDs in Australia are on scholarships - In the US it seems everybody gets some form of support, here I suppose most people have to rely on themselves or their partner/family.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:04:24 +0000

Sinc - Though the quality of the budget papers has improved slightly on last year, it is still very difficult even for people who work in this field to work out exactly what is going on because of the level of aggregation in the published numbers. But on my analysis at this point there will be an increase on actual spending for 2007-08, with it roughly neutral on forward estimates.

By: Sinclair Davidson

Sinclair Davidson — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:33:20 +0000

They also cut the literacy vouchers (probably on idelogical grounds) and my favourate the ‘every child will have a computer at school‘ policy has gone from $1 billion over 4 years to $1.2 billion over five years. It is still woefully underfunded.

By: Sinclair Davidson

Sinclair Davidson — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:48:40 +0000

It looked to me that the actual funding to universities has declined.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:45:59 +0000

Christian - In 2006, there were about 20,000 PhD students and about 5,000 APAs, so about 25% receive them (though there are other scholarships). Presuming constant numbers, the proportion would rise to about 50% under Labor’s policy.

I tend to think that higher scholarships for a lower number of people would be a better policy. Having had an APA myself many years ago, living on a subsistence income while most of your contemporaries are starting to earn good money is not an attractive option.